وَالَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا وَكَذَّبُوا بِآيَاتِنَا أُولَٰئِكَ أَصْحَابُ النَّارِ خَالِدِينَ فِيهَا وَبِئْسَ الْمَصِيرُ
"And those who denied and cried lies to Our signs are the people of the Fire; they remain there. What an evil arrival!"
- كَفَرُوا — they covered. An inward operation: closing over what one has seen.
- كَذَّبُوا — they cried lies. An outward operation: saying "this is a lie".
This distinction was treated in al-Māʿūn and I do not repeat it: kadhaba (Form I) means "he told a lie" — the agent is a liar; kadhdhaba (Form II) means "he called another's true utterance a lie" — what he does is to reject what is true. And what was recorded there is this: takdhīb is not a silent denial but an active stance, a taking up of position.
And this connects with the second verse of the sūra: there only kāfirun had been said — a state. Here an act is added to the state.
Root: ص ح ب. Ṣaḥb is to be together, to keep company, to be found alongside. Ṣāḥib is a travelling companion; ṣuḥba is being together; aṣḥāb is its plural.
The Qurʾān uses this construct often: aṣḥābu'l-nār, aṣḥābu'l-janna, aṣḥābu'l-yamīn, aṣḥābu'l-shimāl, aṣḥābu'l-kahf, aṣḥābu'l-ukhdūd (treated in al-Burūj).
The choice of the word is striking. It does not say "those who enter the Fire" or "those who are in the Fire"; it says "the companions of the Fire". Inside the word ṣuḥba there is a continuity and a belonging: not a place one owns but a place one belongs to.
And a point recorded in al-Maʿārij bears on this place: in the root of the word ʿizīn too there is belonging — everyone has a group. Here too a group is being named: the person is not present in the Fire, he belongs to the Fire.
بِئْسَ in Arabic is a fiʿl al-dhamm — a verb of dispraise. Its counterpart is niʿma (a verb of praise). Both are frozen verbs; they do not inflect.
And ٱلْمَصِير was the verse-ending of the third verse: wa ilayhi'l-maṣīr — "to Him is the coming home."
The sūra brings the same word back seven verses later, and this time places a verb of dispraise before it.
| 64/3 | 64/10 | |
|---|---|---|
| Expression | wa ilayhi'l-maṣīr | wa biʾsa'l-maṣīr |
| What it says | To whom the coming home is | What the arrival is like |
| Scope | Everyone | Some |
| Tone | Neutral | Dispraise |
The meaning of this is: the address of the coming home and the character of the arrival are separate things. Everyone comes home to the same place; but not everyone meets the same thing.
This agrees with the picture the sūra has been building from the start. In the second verse people came out of a single creation and were divided into two groups; here they come out of a single homecoming and are divided into two outcomes. The structure is the same: a common beginning, a diverging outcome.